The Candice Malcolm Show - DEBUNKED： The biggest myths about the Israel⧸Hamas conflict

00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm. I'm a Canadian journalist and political commentator. I write for the

00:00:12.160 Toronto Sun and I am the founder and editor-in-chief of True North. I want to do a video today

00:00:18.620 because I want to talk about the conflict going on in Israel, frankly, because I see a lot of

00:00:23.820 misinformation, a lot of propaganda, and a lot of myths when it comes to this conflict and to Israel

00:00:30.740 more broadly. Just first things first, I will put all of my biases out there. I'm not Jewish. I'm not 0.75

00:00:37.580 Muslim. I don't really have a dog in the fight other than the fact that I believe Israel is an 1.00

00:00:43.340 ally to Western countries like Canada and the United States. I think that Israel has the right 0.56

00:00:49.080 to defend itself against terrorist insurgencies and against adversarial actors that are in the

00:00:56.260 region. And I think that Israel is really a shining example of a pluralistic, peaceful, free society

00:01:04.540 in the Middle East. One of the very few, if not the only examples of a peaceful and free society in

00:01:11.600 the Middle East. So I think that Israel is admirable in many ways. But I also say that I don't think 0.98

00:01:18.340 it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. I think just like any government, it's fair game to criticize 0.97

00:01:23.740 politicians, to criticize policies, and to criticize government in Israel. And I'm also very sympathetic

00:01:31.760 to the people of Palestine, the Palestinian people, the Arabs living in the area. You know, everybody

00:01:38.380 wants there to be a peaceful solution. I had the opportunity to visit Israel and the West Bank and

00:01:46.840 speak to Arab Israelis, to speak to Palestinians when I was there back in 2015. And I was there as a

00:01:56.200 working journalist. And, you know, basically what I heard from people is a little bit different than

00:02:01.840 what you hear in the media. I spoke to Israelis, Jewish Israelis who hate their government. They're

00:02:07.680 not, you know, they're not big fans of Netanyahu. They think that he's corrupt. And, you know,

00:02:13.980 they don't like his domestic policies. The reason that he's so popular is because he is strong. He's

00:02:20.700 willing to fight fire with fire. He wants to decimate the terrorist insurgencies. And I think

00:02:27.140 that resonates with a lot of Israelis who just want this to be over with. They've tried, you know,

00:02:32.180 a lot of different ways to negotiate, to try to make peace deals, to try to make a two-state solution.

00:02:36.500 Nothing has worked. And they're just fed up, tired of the fighting, tired of the war, tired of, you

00:02:42.080 know, having loved ones be killed. And so they just want a strong leader that will end it. On the other

00:02:48.320 side, I also spoke to many Palestinians. What I heard from them a lot was actually a bit more surprising.

00:02:56.020 I heard people that were very, very critical of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader. They said that he's

00:03:03.160 corrupt, that he refuses to hold elections, that he's weak, that he bows down to the terrorist 0.60

00:03:09.020 insurgencies. And so, you know, I don't think it's this black and white. I think you have Jewish 1.00

00:03:14.920 Israelis who are critical of their own government. You have Palestinians who hate the leadership and

00:03:19.640 the people that are making decisions on their side. And, you know, both sides just want this to

00:03:24.140 end. They just want to find peace. They want to live side by side. And, you know, they're not really

00:03:29.400 being very well represented by their leaders. So today I want to take a few minutes to go through

00:03:35.820 some of the biggest myths that I am seeing when it comes to the current clash. This one right now

00:03:40.580 in May 2021. So I had my friends over at True North come up with a couple of examples of these myths,

00:03:46.700 and I'm going to go through them for you right now. Myth number one, Palestinians were peaceful and

00:03:53.120 unarmed. And it was the Israeli forces that instigated this fight. And Palestinians were just 0.98

00:03:58.880 defending themselves. Well, this is just not true. So basically what happened was that there was a

00:04:05.740 riot at Temple Mount. This was clearly pre-planned. You can see, you know, so Temple Mount is the

00:04:13.400 holiest place in the Jewish religion. It's also the third holiest place in the Muslim religion, 0.99

00:04:18.180 which is why a lot of this conflict begins, because these two groups share a holy land, basically,

00:04:24.340 and they both want to control it. So Muslims were there, they were praying, and all of a sudden it

00:04:30.340 devolved into a riot. Well, the problem is that we saw some pictures here that show that this riot

00:04:36.840 looked like it was pre-planned. There were giant slabs of concrete and rocks that were placed everywhere

00:04:42.960 to sort of encourage Palestinian protesters to get violent. There were reports of rioters that were

00:04:49.320 throwing Molotov cocktails, which are basically just firebombs. So they're throwing firebombs,

00:04:54.440 they're throwing fireworks. They're really agitating the Israeli police and kind of just encouraging the

00:05:01.040 police to overreact. And we saw that a little bit with, you know, the same kind of riot control that

00:05:06.080 you would see in a North American city during an Antifa riot, you know, using tear gas and trying to

00:05:11.960 just clear the area and move people out. Well, that was sort of the origin of this battle.

00:05:17.460 And then Hamas began firing its rockets. So first it fired rockets into Jerusalem. Even though it's 0.84

00:05:24.460 supposedly, you know, the holy city of Jerusalem, Hamas is firing rockets into Jerusalem. And that is

00:05:31.860 what, that is what prompted this entire battle. Israel didn't respond for hours later. And so the

00:05:38.620 idea that somehow, that somehow Israel started this is just, it's just not true. The facts are on the

00:05:44.960 other side. And so, you know, that's that. Let's go on to the next myth. Number two, Israel is an 0.72

00:05:53.520 apartheid state. We saw a couple of Green Party MPs tweeting this, of course. In the US, AOC said that

00:06:01.780 it was an apartheid state. Let's just be clear about something. Okay, the definition of apartheid,

00:06:06.340 most people when they think of apartheid, they think of South Africa, where there were separate laws,

00:06:10.440 separate institutions, separate public availability for white South Africans versus black South

00:06:17.260 Africans. So separate, separate system of law. So the definition of apartheid is a policy or system

00:06:24.180 of segregation or discrimination on the grounds of race. Well, that's just simply not the case in

00:06:30.940 Israel. There are no separate laws for different races. There aren't even separate laws for different

00:06:35.380 religions. About 20% of the population of Israel is made up of Arab Israelis. So Arabs who live in 1.00

00:06:42.680 Israel, I'm not talking about the disputed territories, not Gaza, not West Bank, but the

00:06:47.240 actual territory of Israel, about 20% of the population is Arab, and they have full access to

00:06:53.020 every institution the same way as a Jewish Israeli or a Christian Israeli or any other religion of

00:06:59.940 Israelis. So the idea that they're separate systems of government simply isn't true. There are Arabs

00:07:06.140 that are represented in the parliament in Israel that you see, you know, Arabs in positions of power as

00:07:14.140 judges, as justices, elected officials, teachers, police officers, their positions throughout the

00:07:20.620 society. So the idea that somehow that there's like separate buses and separate schools and separate

00:07:26.220 restaurants for Arabs versus Jews is just not true. That's not what it's like in Israel. I think a lot

00:07:33.920 of people who push this out there are just sort of playing on emotions. And also, maybe they're

00:07:41.280 talking about the Arabs who live in the disputed territories. Well, that that is separate. But the

00:07:46.480 idea here is that both sides want a two state solution. So, you know, the territories that are

00:07:52.800 disputed, like Gaza, is governed by Hamas, and and the West Bank is governed by the Palestinian

00:07:59.620 authorities. So they have their own governments, which are Arab. And so, you know, the idea that they

00:08:06.900 would be like held under Israeli law, that doesn't really go in line with the two state solution. So the

00:08:13.560 idea of apartheid is just a myth. Let's go to number three, which is that Israel is guilty of war crimes. 0.65

00:08:22.080 We hear this a lot that that Israel targets civilians, that Israel kills children. This

00:08:29.200 simply isn't the case. It's actually Hamas. It's Hamas who fires its rockets indiscriminately into 0.56

00:08:35.120 Israel, hoping to hit civilian targets. When Hamas fires thousands of rockets in one night, the whole

00:08:40.940 point is to overwhelm Israel. Israel has the Iron Doom program, which is something really remarkable. 0.99

00:08:46.640 It is actually a very cool piece of technology that when Hamas shoots a rocket towards civilians

00:08:52.560 in neighborhoods in Israel, Israel has the capacity to shoot that rocket down. And the reason that Hamas 1.00

00:08:58.120 fires so many at once is because the Iron Dome is only capable really of firing down about 90%

00:09:04.460 of those rockets. So the other 10% go through. So just through sheer numbers, Hamas tries to overwhelm 0.80

00:09:11.720 the system firing at civilian targets. They actually don't even care whether they hit Arab Israelis or

00:09:17.640 Jewish Israelis. They don't even care if they hit Gazans. A lot of times these rockets fall short, 0.98

00:09:23.000 and they actually end up landing in Gaza killing kids and families, which is partially why the death

00:09:29.240 count is so disproportionate. People think that the fact that a lot of people are dying in Gaza and not a lot

00:09:34.680 of people are dying in Israel. We have dozens on one side and hundreds on the other. It's not simply

00:09:40.200 because Israel's dropping more bombs. It's partially because Gaza is just so reckless that many of its 0.97

00:09:46.840 own rockets land on its own people. And then as far as the war crimes of Israel, look, this is very well 0.99

00:09:53.320 known and well documented that Hamas is a terrorist insurgency and they use the people in Gaza as a human

00:10:00.680 shield. And you probably heard this term before, human shield. Basically, Hamas hides among civilians.

00:10:07.000 They fire their rockets from the streets in densely populated neighborhoods. Their rockets are getting

00:10:11.480 launched from, you know, a small area between two apartment buildings. And so it makes it really,

00:10:16.840 really hard for Israeli troops to fire back and to try to kill the operatives who are firing the rockets

00:10:22.920 because they're hiding among civilians. And so Israel goes to great, great efforts to try to stop this.

00:10:30.680 When they're going to bomb a known asset, a known Hamas asset, they give advance notice. They give 0.53

00:10:38.280 warning. They send text messages. They drop leaflets. They're pleading for citizens to leave. They want

00:10:44.120 people to leave. They are begging for families, you know, mothers, families, children, get out. We're going to 0.99

00:10:50.920 be attacking this building because Hamas are operating here. Get out. The reason that many 1.00

00:10:56.040 people stay is because of the intimidation by the terrorists themselves. They encourage people to

00:11:01.160 stay. They tell them not to leave. They want them to stay, to act as a human shield so that Israel cannot 0.87

00:11:07.160 bomb. And then if Israel does bomb, they get the bad, horrible publicity and the blood on their hands 0.69

00:11:13.400 of killing families and kids. It's horrible. You know, the reality of any war is that it's horrendous and 0.96

00:11:19.400 by nature, you know, sides are killing each other. People are getting killed. People are getting

00:11:23.640 blown up. Sometimes civilians get caught in the crossfire. The difference is that Israel tries 0.75

00:11:29.160 really, really hard to minimalize this, whereas Hamas does the exact opposite. Here's an example of 0.83

00:11:35.320 Israel. You know, they're trying to shoot down a Hamas asset and they realize that there were kids

00:11:41.320 there and so they abort the mission. Here's what that looks like.

00:11:59.320 And so again, Israel is making every effort it can not to commit war crimes. Whereas again, on the other

00:12:05.560 side of the equation is Hamas, who is committing war crimes because they are intentionally aiming at 0.96

00:12:12.520 civilians in Israel. And it's also worth noting that, you know, it's not just that they fire their

00:12:16.760 rockets from amidst civilian areas. They also plant their headquarters beneath a hospital, a civilian

00:12:23.240 hospital so that Israel can't bomb it without, you know, blowing up this hospital. Tunnel entrances 0.87

00:12:29.240 is well documented that an entrance to a tunnel, which is where the Hamas leaders will use

00:12:34.040 to sneak underground and go into Israel. The tunnel entrance will be right next to a mosque, 1.00

00:12:39.320 right next to a school, right next to a kindergarten, making it again really, really

00:12:42.760 hard for Israel to try to take that out without having these mass casualty situations. And so Israel

00:12:49.080 kind of has its hands tied, making it harder to combat Hamas. And then if it ever does, you know, having

00:12:54.920 to deal with the bad press. So again, it's just a myth that Israel is committing war crimes.

00:13:00.360 The next myth that we hear is that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing. Again, this is just

00:13:07.720 not true. So the definition of ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of one

00:13:14.280 ethnic or religious group in one area by another area. So it's not quite as bad as genocide, but it's 0.68

00:13:20.840 almost there. It's kind of like right next to genocide in terms of forcibly removing one ethnic 0.73

00:13:25.720 group or killing them all. That's a very, very harsh accusation to be made. And again, there just

00:13:33.080 really isn't evidence of that. So, you know, when it comes to people who get moved, you know, this,

00:13:39.880 this whole thing, we hear a lot about the evictions that were happening at Sheikh Jarrah. Basically,

00:13:45.720 this is a legal dispute that has been in the court for decades. And so they're using a legal

00:13:51.240 mechanism according to the rule of law to lawfully evict squatters who live in six houses. And we're

00:13:58.920 told that this process somehow equates to ethnic cleansing. It's just not true. The reality,

00:14:04.600 of course, is the exact opposite. Jews and Christians have been the victims of ethnic

00:14:09.240 cleansing throughout the Middle East for over a hundred years. There have been sustained campaigns

00:14:13.720 of ethnic cleansing against Jews targeting Jews to leave their homes and to move. The reason that so 1.00

00:14:19.480 many people have moved to Israel in the last 70 years is because Israel is a safe haven. Israel is

00:14:25.960 where Jews can go when they get kicked out and they get pushed out and they get victims of these 0.66

00:14:31.560 barbaric regimes in neighboring countries. And you can just look at the population changes throughout the

00:14:38.360 Middle East since the middle part of the last century. So as an example, in Egypt in 1956,

00:14:46.760 the Egyptian government declared all Jews the enemy of the state and immediately began a systemic

00:14:52.440 expulsion. Again, that is ethnic cleansing. Similar things happened in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria. 0.72

00:14:58.920 This is a report from the Jerusalem Post that says exactly what I'm saying. It says in 1948,

00:15:05.240 the year Israel was declared a state, 265,000 Jews lived in Morocco, 150,000 lived in Iraq, 140,000 in

00:15:13.960 Algeria, 100,000 in Egypt, 100,000 in Tunisia, 55,000 in Lebanon, 40,000 in Libya, 30,000 in Syria,

00:15:22.600 and thousands more throughout the Middle East and North Africa for a grand total of 880,000.

00:15:28.680 Shortly thereafter, over 850,000 Jews were expelled from the very countries they called home,

00:15:34.600 the Arab League rejected the establishment of the state of Israel and ultimately decided in forcing

00:15:40.120 out the absolute majority of Jews from their countries. Nearly one million Jews were forcibly

00:15:45.640 banished from their homes. So the reality of the state of Israel is that yes, Jews have been living 0.98

00:15:52.840 in this region for thousands of years. It's been very well documented. But during the second half of

00:15:58.760 the last century, they started getting removed from their countries, kicked out of their countries,

00:16:02.920 the victims of ethnic cleansing. So all of these people came to Israel to find a peaceful place

00:16:08.680 that they can live, where they can pray, where they can practice their religion without persecution.

00:16:13.400 And that is the modern story of Israel. People go there for safe haven and no, they're not practicing

00:16:20.120 in their own sort of ethnic cleansing. You can be of any religion and live in Israel, aside from being a 0.78

00:16:26.680 mecca for persecuted Jews from the region. It's also where persecuted minorities from other religions.

00:16:33.880 So you have Christians that live there, Baha'is, you have lots of persecuted gays, people who can't 0.99

00:16:39.160 live peacefully in other parts of the Middle East, go to Israel to live there. And it doesn't force

00:16:44.680 non-Jews to leave. That's just not true. And that myth kind of goes hand in hand with the next one that

00:16:50.680 we see a lot, which is that Israel is the creation of settler colonialism, that it's a white oppressor,

00:16:59.480 oppressing, you know, sort of brown-skinned people who live in the area. Again, when you go to Israel, 0.90

00:17:04.920 you realize that the Israelis that live there are Middle Eastern. They're not European Israelis.

00:17:11.560 You know, when you think of Jews, you might think of someone like Seth Rogen or Ben Shapiro,

00:17:16.520 who sort of look European. When you're in Israel, what you see is that most of the people that are 0.89

00:17:21.320 there are Middle Eastern. They had either been there for hundreds or thousands of years,

00:17:26.280 you know, their families have, or like I said, the people that were persecuted and forced to leave

00:17:30.920 Iran, forced to leave Morocco, forced to leave these other countries, but they're Middle Eastern. 0.90

00:17:35.800 So the whole idea that somehow it's just like white European country in the middle of the Middle East

00:17:41.960 sort of forced all the local people off. It's not correct. That's not accurate. It's sort of

00:17:47.480 using the metaphor of North America, trying to apply it, apply it onto Israel. And it's just not

00:17:53.880 the case. I encourage you to look into the history because there is a lot of history, but I will just

00:17:58.840 say that Jews have been living in Israel for thousands of years. And, you know, when it comes to the British

00:18:05.000 involvement, basically Israel, the territory that is Israel today was part of the Ottoman Empire.

00:18:10.440 When the Ottoman Empire fell during the First World War, the British stepped in with the

00:18:14.440 Palestine mandate. They managed it for a while. They ended up creating two states. So they created 0.51

00:18:19.320 an Arab state, which is Jordan. 98% of that country is Arab. And the other state they created was Israel,

00:18:25.960 which was governed by Jews. And so, you know, the whole idea that somehow this is the product of

00:18:33.160 white supremacy or, you know, colonialism. It really, really just isn't true. Okay. Myth number six,

00:18:44.280 Israel is targeting civilians and that it targeted a media headquarters. This is kind of tied to the

00:18:49.560 other myth that I did. And this will be the last myth. I'll leave it here. But the idea that Israel is 0.60

00:18:55.960 targeting citizens is just not true. They're targeting Hamas. It's just that Hamas, as any terrorist group,

00:19:01.160 you know, they're plain clothes. They're not soldiers. It's hard to hit military assets

00:19:05.960 because they are hidden amongst the civilians. And Israel does go to painstaking efforts to avoid

00:19:12.280 hitting civilians. It's just being reported that when it comes to this one building that people are

00:19:20.040 upset about, the Israeli defense shared intelligence with the U.S. defense, showing

00:19:25.320 why it was a legitimate target, why they had intel showing that Hamas was using it as a base.

00:19:31.560 Regardless, here we have Canadian Joel Simon, who's the executive director of the Committee to

00:19:36.600 Protect Journalists, saying that this attack raises concerns that Israel is targeting the media,

00:19:41.960 trying to disrupt coverage of the human suffering in Gaza. He demanded detailed and documented

00:19:47.560 justification for the attack. Well, that justification has been given. But again,

00:19:51.640 it's really important to understand that Hamas does use a human shield. It is very intentional. 0.57

00:19:56.760 It is part of their strategy. And journalists, look, we know what's going on. We know that this is what

00:20:01.640 they do. They do it time and time and time again. It's been very well documented. We shouldn't fall

00:20:07.000 prey to this narrative. We shouldn't accept this propaganda. And we should criticize it. We should lay

00:20:14.120 it out there so that people do understand that Israel's not targeting civilians. They're targeting

00:20:18.840 terrorists. It just so happens that the terrorists are mixed in. Okay, that's it for the myths. I'll

00:20:24.120 just finish by saying one thing. I said at the beginning of this video that it is okay to criticize

00:20:29.080 Israel. It is not anti-Semitic. I will just say that you get into dicey territory and borderline 0.57

00:20:34.920 anti-Semitism when you go out of your way to demonize Israel, when you don't think that the

00:20:40.520 only Jewish state in the world should have any right to exist or any right to defend itself, 1.00

00:20:45.320 when you're saying that, you know, they use disproportionate force. Well, just, you know,

00:20:50.600 put yourself in their shoes. Imagine for one second that Canada had a neighbor that was 0.82

00:20:56.120 run by terrorists that was bombarding us with bombs, shooting them into civilian neighborhoods.

00:21:00.760 And the stated goal of that terrorist group was to ensure that Canada didn't exist. The Canadians were 0.77

00:21:06.600 all killed or removed from the area. And that was their goal. Imagine how we would react. And so 0.79

00:21:12.680 before you criticize Israel, try to imagine what it's like to actually live there. Think about what

00:21:18.360 the people have gone through, the history of the region, understanding, you know, the different

00:21:23.000 aspects of play. It's not a simple oppressor, oppressed narrative that so many on the left love

00:21:28.680 to use. They always just simplify it and try to fit it into their narrow little worldview. But that's not

00:21:34.200 the case. I think that it is important that we dispel these myths in order to have a clearer

00:21:39.240 understanding of what is going on. All right. Thanks so much for watching. I'm Candace Malcolm for True North.

The Candice Malcolm Show - May 21, 2021

DEBUNKED： The biggest myths about the Israel⧸Hamas conflict

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